


Every Breath

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Injury, Dark, Enemies to Lovers, First Kiss, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 16:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2434631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam barely survives a trap laid out for him by Metatron, but seizes the opportunity to set out one of his own in turn.<br/>Timelined somewhere between First Born and Meta Fiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Breath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Hinky_Panda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Hinky_Panda/gifts).



> ... well then. This didn't go _quite_ as I planned. Hmm.

* * *

 

Sam pressed a hand over his bleeding side and grimaced, dragging himself painstakingly to the back wall, far enough from the dead corpse of some angel's vessel. He hissed at the pain as he lifted his hand and watched blood drip down from it, and a breathless chuckle escaped him at the sight - this had been a stupid idea. He'd known it, but he hadn't been thinking straight. Recently, it was hard to think straight; the weight of fighting with Dean, the weight of Kevin's death, the weight of his life made it hard to see clearly. And tonight he supposed he'd given up planning, given up considering, and just done instead. It never ended any different.  
The worst was, of course Gadreel would not be here. Metatron had probably smelled the desperation reeking from Sam miles and miles away and set it all up. The only ace Sam had in this battle was that it was over, and he was the only man standing, if his current slouched pose could be considered such.

The wound was in a bad place; it prevented him from landing weight upon his leg, and it was bleeding heavily enough. He might not make it even if he'd manage to crawl to the car. There was no guarantee it wouldn't bleed even harder in that position, and the pain was blinding. Shame burned at him as he reached for his phone, but it soon turned from that to ice flowing into his veins as he realised he couldn't turn on the screen. The battery had drained. He'd left without recharging it. How stupid could a man be?

A heavy sigh left his lips as he leaned his head back to the wall. Well, the cavalry would not come, then. Perhaps there was another plan to be made here; a desperate but, if he was honest, an interesting one. He prepared it as he did his best to draw his shirts into a poor excuse for field dressing, mouth trying out words that would more than likely turn out useless for him. Who was to say where Gadreel was? More than likely he would be far from here - a big player on the field, like Metatron's second-in-command, would be kept out of a hunter's reach. Yet there was still a chance, and that wasn't what Sam's plan was falling at. It based solely on what he'd felt before, something that was neither rational nor reasonable: his trust that Gadreel had genuinely cared about him the way he'd felt the whole year, that the sensation of comfort and safety which had lingered inside him for the months past was a bleeding effect and not a trick played to keep him docile.  
He closed his eyes and prayed: there was yet a chance he'd get to drive his blade into the right target after all, and his own stupidity had granted him that chance.

 

* * *

 

Time was probably ticking the small hours of the night when Sam's alertness returned to him through the veil of light sleep. A creak announced the movement of something heavier than a stray cat, and the bootsteps that he could make apart afterwards mixed with the dull dust lingering about in the storeroom's darkness.  
He watched the black shape step into the faint greyish light cast from the small windows above Sam's head somewhere, revealing a face he'd only seen in his induced dreams; a shiver ran up his spine and caused his hair to stand on edge, and despite the weakness in his limbs he struggled to stir into a better position against the wall.

Gadreel hesitated: his weight shifted from one leg to the other, but he'd clearly made his decision, as there he was. Now the only thing Sam needed was him a little closer, but good things came to those who had patience for them, and he watched the angel's struggle with relative calm despite the growing burn of the wound that had at least for the time being stopped leaking.  
Finally the sentry took a step forwards, and the rest followed, turning his stance from conflicted to confident. He watched Sam keenly as he knelt in front of him on the dusty ground.  
"You prayed," he said in a tone of surprise, "to me. Let me take a look at your injury."

The sincerity in his voice stung, but Sam couldn't understand why. It should have been a victory for him, the fact that Gadreel didn't doubt his intentions, but instead it felt like he was betraying something... innocent, not a murderer, not someone who'd betrayed before. The sudden turn in his decisiveness caused him to tilt his body and lift his free hand from over the wound instead of driving the hidden blade through the older's gut as he'd initially intended to do - the hesitation could be deadly for him, but now he wasn't in a position to strike anymore, and he'd have to wait for another chance.  
The other wasn't even asking him why he was here, or why the angel he'd crossed as he'd entered was dead on the ground - he wasn't asking about the corpses littering the hallway behind the door, he didn't even seem to hold the subject important. Sam couldn't decide if he was very good with setting priorities or if he just didn't care about casualties, but considering he'd had to have been aware of Metatron's plan... it only made sense the toll it had taken wouldn't much concern him. These angels had died to cover up his track, to keep him safe, and he didn't seem to find their sacrifice much of a debt at all.  
The thought made the younger sick and he looked away as Gadreel pressed his fingers over the exposed, stained flesh above the wound after undoing the shirt from around it - the remaining tee that Sam was wearing was torn from a larger area around the wound and presented no problem for Gadreel to push aside. The angel's concentration turned in its entirety to what Sam could only assume was estimating the damage, and he realised that this was his chance to strike: his fingers wound up tighter around the blade and he waited for the feeling that soon enough flooded him, trickling into his sore flesh like liquid relief. Gadreel's balance shifted, then broke; he landed a hand into the dirty ground and a small sigh escaped his lips, his eyes closing as Sam lifted the blade he was holding. Another checkmate: Sam blinked, watching the other gasp labouredly at this minimal effort at not even healing the wound, just stopping the bleeding.

He laid the blade back on the ground.

"What happened here?" Gadreel suddenly asked through gritted teeth, forcing his head up and his eyes flashing as he turned them towards Sam.  
Sam wasn't sure if the flash was a reflection from the window's light above them or if it had been grace, but the sight made him shiver again. That was a question he hadn't expected.

"Shouldn't you know?" he asked in turn, voice more confused than directly accusing.

Gadreel shook his head slowly.  
"I have no idea. These are angels I knew, angels I - have spoken with."

"Metatron's."

The sentry nodded hesitantly.  
"Metatron's soldiers," he agreed, "It looks like an ambush, but I cannot understand what you would have been doing here."

Sam scoffed, prompting a curious frown from the other. They had a staredown with one another, the kind that never progressed to any conclusion: Gadreel seemed to have no idea at all of what had taken place here. It made Sam uncomfortable - perhaps more so than the situation had before, as it not only forced him to re-evaluate the circumstances he'd gotten himself into, but also the older's standing. Together with the weakness Gadreel was showing, nothing seemed to make much sense in the light that Sam had been shining into the matters.  
"You... _really_ don't know?" he asked.

"I have no idea," Gadreel repeated, "I was surprised to hear your prayer, but I am thankful for it."

"Thankful?"

The sentry nodded slowly, landing his other knee on the floor and balancing himself again. He cast a lost look at the dirt over his palm before wiping it awkwardly to the side of his jeans like a child who'd fallen and injured himself.  
"After what I... after what I did - I did not expect... to hear from you again."

"After what you did."

Gadreel nodded again, now looking back at Sam with almost a pleading expression; he didn't seem to have words, but neither had Sam. Not for the time being. Nothing about this situation made sense to him. They were enemies, yet Gadreel had entered the arena and put, it seemed, enormous effort into trying to heal him just because he'd asked, and there was no hostility in him whatsoever - like he wasn't even cautious, like it didn't even _occur_ to him that he was in a prime position to end Sam's life here and gain a victory for his new master and that Sam, in turn, was in a prime position to kill him for the crimes he was nearly confessing to here.  
The silence stretched to an owl hooting outdoors. Something ran across the metal roof above them, small claws raking the rough surface. Sam swallowed.  
"Can you help me to a motel?" he asked then.

Gadreel examined him for a moment before placing his fingers over the wound; Sam grasped his hand before realising he'd done so.  
"Don't. I can patch it up myself. Thanks for stopping the bleeding."  
Relief washed over Gadreel's features as he nodded. He retreated his hand and offered it to Sam to help him up and Sam took it. The situation had taken an odd turn, he thought as he heard the metal of the grace blade he was still grasping grate against the floor and realised that instead of even looking at it Gadreel was merely holding up the eye contact with him - he had to know Sam could have now stabbed him without him having the time to react, yet he chose to give him the chance. Once they were both standing, there was no hostility between them, and Sam pushed the blade back into the band woven into his belt.

 

* * *

 

Standing was difficult, but walking was almost impossible without support. Sam tried his best to not need help on his way back to the car but then he stumbled, and if it hadn't been for the healing Gadreel had done on his flesh, the wound would have torn right open again. He closed his eyes and breathed as the shock after the pain faded from him, and through that he felt the angel pick up his arm and bring it around his shoulder - he stood much stronger than Sam now, and the hunter grudgingly leaned into that for balance. Warmth from the other's body charged into him and made his heart flutter, and as they continued walking, the pain seemed lesser again, like just the angel's presence was a sedative to Sam's body, a signal that everything was going to be alright. He hated it, but on the other hand he couldn't deny that he didn't hate it quite as much as he would have preferred. In the car he dozed off and the next time he woke up it was to the angel's hand upon his arm. Dawn was breaking, but so far it was nothing but a thin line, almost invisible to the naked eye, in the horizon; the motel's parking lot seemed emptier than Sam was used to, but his dizzy head was giving him little time to reflect upon the fact. Somehow Gadreel was already holding keys to the room - he'd spared Sam the effort of reserving one, and Sam realised as they made their way towards the door that there was no way that he could have done it, as he was much too weak from bleeding.

The room was comfortable and dimly lit. It was clean, new; the furniture didn't yet have the rugged look of most motels that Sam had slept in over the years. He settled on the bed, bag slipping from his good shoulder down to the floor with a thud and he let out a pained sigh at the feel - bending down didn't seem like something he was able to do, but he was almost set on trying before suddenly the angel was there in front of him again.  
Gadreel lifted the bag on the bed behind Sam and sat next to him: as Sam watched, he realised the sentry's gaze had turned from lost to confident, decisive again. It now seemed more like the kind of a look he expected to see on a powerful angel, but it came at an odd time.

"You said you could patch yourself up," Gadreel spoke grimly, "yet you cannot even pull up a bag from the floor. Let me care for you. This one last time."

Sam's lips parted and heat charged up to his cheekbones.  
"What the hell is up with you?" he asked, hand shaking as he brought it back over the still badly wrapped-up wound.  
His shirt and the waist of his jeans was all covered in dried blood so that it felt rough and hard to touch.

"I promised to take care of you. I will stand by that promise, if only you let me. You prayed for my help, and I came; let me do what you asked me here for. You did not take my life - you chose to let me live, not once, not twice, but you are still making that choice, every breath I take you have granted me. I understand that what I've done, both to you and your friend, is unforgivable, and I do not beg for your forgiveness - but if you do not punish me for it now, you must let me live for a reason."

Sam didn't notice Gadreel's hand before he felt the warm weight of his palm land over his chest and gently push him back. Hesitantly, head still swimming, he gave in and leaned back until his body met the mattress underneath. He closed his eyes to the feel of the angel undoing his shirts - first the bloodstained plaid from around his waist and then the shirt that he'd still worn. Without it he felt exposed and vulnerable, but he was too tired and too confused to care much; he peered at the ceiling when Gadreel left the bed and walked to the bathroom. For some reason Sam felt tears in his eyes, and they burned at the corners like salt. He should have by now taken the older's life but there he was, on his back on the bed while he listened to Gadreel wet a towel in the bathroom, waiting for him to clean his wound for him, waiting for him to care for him. This wasn't what he'd set out to do. This was some weird, twisted, impossible opposite of what he'd intended, yet now that he no longer carried an angel blade with him, it seemed that he'd made his decision. He swallowed thickly and mouthed a voiceless apology to the ceiling in Kevin's name; it seemed that he simply did not have it in him, for one reason or another, to do what was right. He was weakened in a way that had nothing to do with his injury, like a seed had taken root in him from the things he'd felt and recalled during the evening - the safety, the feeling of being cared for, had somehow dulled him like rust dulled a blade. He couldn't take Gadreel's life tonight. Now he no longer knew if he wanted to at all. There was something in here that didn't make any sense, and he'd felt it before - he'd known it the whole time, it was in the conflict of what he'd felt and what had transpired, the truth that he knew and the truth that his heart insisted upon. Very few memories had come back to him from the time he'd been possessed and for the most part those memories consisted of experiences that he couldn't translate to human consciousness: they were feelings, emotions that only somewhat resembled those he felt, but when they'd been one, he'd known them as if they were his own. He recalled gentleness, happiness, safety, fear and frustration born out of that fear - he remembered desperation so deep that it ached inside the marrows of his bones, and pain that wasn't his own. But to make a statement out of that, for better or worse, was impossible, and it had been so much easier to trust just what he knew in his conscious mind: Gadreel had betrayed them, murdered Kevin. The reasons why... they were too complicated, too obscured, too difficult to process for Sam, so he'd chosen not to.  
Yet they still haunted him.  
He'd been there - he'd been there the whole time. He still carried that truth in him just like he carried that which was known to his brother and Kevin alike - the truth that he only shared with this angel. He was the only witness to this side of the story, and as unwilling as he was, he also felt responsible to balance his hurt with consideration, empathy; for if he didn't grant Gadreel that, then no one would.

The sentry settled back on the bed, placing a bath towel next to him and taking the wet smaller one gently to Sam's side. The younger drew breath and closed his eyes again, obscuring the view of the ceiling above him, and his heartbeat could be felt over the swollen cut that the other was now cleaning with warm water and a firm hand.  
The repetition lulled him into a state of rest - the throbbing ache settled, little by little, as the filth from the wound was washed away. Sometimes, although he was so tired that he couldn't properly make sense of it, he felt the older's fingertips press into his flesh and suddenly the pain easened again, turned to ripples instead of waves, and his muscles relaxed as his weight settled deeper into the embrace of the mattress below. He felt so good here; the conflict in his mind calmed like the pain in him did, a charging river of thought turning to smoothly coursing flow with a mirror surface, and when his consciousness was roused by the feel of a proper dressing being applied around his waist he came to with a sense of restfulness instead of the storm of doubt that he'd dozed off with.  
Gadreel watched him as he opened his eyes, and they looked at one another for a good while in complete silence. The golden morning's light cast through the parted curtains over the angel's shape and Sam saw sadness in him, a strange longing that was as out of place in Sam's own image of what Gadreel should have been like as most of what he'd witnessed that night.  
He sat up, expecting pain but only feeling a warning ache over the still swollen skin, and accidentally moved his hand on top of the other's; he'd intended to lean over to the bed but instead of the cloth that he'd expected, his palm had met the skin of the angel's hand. Breath escaped him and his lungs refused to replace what had been lost - his horizon tilted and his lips parted, eyes widening and then closing tight to fake an escape from this mistake. His heart raced and ached worse than his injury did, the hurt spreading over his chest like a firm grip, and the breath he finally could draw wavered and hitched.  
A hand pressed over his shoulder, the grip of it light but reassuring, almost guiding, and he opened his eyes to the keen gaze of the angel's.

For a moment, he was trapped in that moment - then, as if parted from himself and stuck in a surreal dream, Sam found himself leaning forwards. His lips pressed over the angel's and he found himself wishing that the world would end right there. Then he felt a response - a small, timid movement against his mouth, and suddenly his skin was containing a thunder, electricity running through his veins and flashing into his tingling fingertips, his toes curling to the feel, his muscles tensing and his body pushing just that much closer to the other. His eyes now once more decisively closed but he was fully aware of what he was doing, the whole absurdity of the situation he'd landed in and the excitement, the despair of it all crashing down into him like an avalanche.  
He ran his fingertips over the cheek and the jaw of the other's until they met the softer skin of his neck, fingers turning to a whole palm and then another on the other side: he held on, kept the other there for him although he seemed to be going nowhere, and the kiss stretched, turned from desperate to scared and from scared to lingering and calm when it finally dawned to them both that it didn't have to end, that time had stopped for them here and whatever would follow simply would. It didn't have to happen now - the tingling of their lips as the skin numbed was nothing but a detail in some place that didn't much concern either of them.  
And when the kiss finally did break, they stayed there, eyes closed and foreheads touching, nose against nose, breathing onto each other's mouth.

Gadreel's hand had moved from under the younger's hand to the top of it now that the hunter had leaned onto it again, and Sam's fingers laced between his, gripping him with a firm hold like afraid he would leave, vanish from him like a dream. They breathed in, out again; the sun kept crawling further up in the sky, turning from golden to pale yellow, to the white of a clearcast early morning. Somewhere not so far away a large dog was barking, howling, before falling quiet again with a quieter gruff.

Sam shifted - his leg was falling asleep in the leaning pose he was still stuck in. He wanted a hundred things and now that reality was returning to him like injected to his bloodstream by a foreign presence, he realised he could have none of those things, and that this, whatever it had briefly been, would have to end here. He pulled back and watched the angel sitting across from him, the blush that friction had summoned around his lips, the light that he'd never before seen in his eyes, and instead of words he found a smile on him, one that Gadreel mirrored before turning his head down.  
They remained quiet for another eternity before Sam finally fell back down on the bed, fingers tangling into the fabric of the older's hoodie and pulling him down as well. Gadreel followed him cautiously but curiously: for a moment they simply watched one another, Sam resting on his good side and Gadreel on the opposite of him, both their legs dangling down from the bed's edge as they now rested almost exactly across it, and their hands were joining again in the middle between their bodies, but now Sam couldn't remember how to smile anymore. He closed his eyes and a weight settled into his muscles - it was the good kind, the restful kind, the kind that had lingered in him since he'd napped for that odd half an hour in the car and then again for the few minutes on the bed before. He breathed slowly and deep, but his lips were trying to form words, just without knowing which he'd dare to pick. Then, finally, he seemed to decide upon some.

"Can you stay?" he asked, a part of his mind jumping in shock at the fact he'd spoken, and at the words that he had.

"I can."

"Then stay."  
Before falling asleep with an arm around him, Sam wondered whether either of them knew what he'd referred to exactly - this moment, this day, or the strange makeshift alliance they'd reforged. But for what it was worth, if Gadreel would try, then he would try too: if the sentry was willing to return to them, then he'd do his best to forgive him.  
And if not - if they would part now as enemies like they'd met half a night earlier - then at least for this moment, what they shared was good enough.


End file.
